CRE Apps recently posted a review on 360 Panorama by Occipital which got a lot of interest. With my curiosity piqued, I set out to look for similar apps. Low and behold, there is a one for the the iPhone called Photosynth.
It is made by Microsoft, and is quite amazing. (Clarification: the app is amazing; knowing that Microsoft is making iPhone apps is more ironic…)
From the product description in Apple’s App Store:
Photosynth for iOS is the panorama creation app that makes it easy and fun to capture and share interactive panoramas of the places, people, and events that are important to you. Using the latest in computer vision techniques, Photosynth allows you to not only make a panorama from left to right, but also up and down, enabling you to capture a full “sphere”.
Once you’ve created a Photosynth you can share it as an interactive panorama experience to Facebook (via the free Photosynth.net service) or as a simple image. You can also publish your panoramas to Bing Maps where millions of people can see your panoramas, both on the a map itself and in search results for the places you’ve captured.
Source: Apple App Store
What is equally incredible is that this app appears to have been out for awhile, but I’ve yet to see it (or 360 Panorama for that matter) used for a commercial real estate listing.
The Photosynth site has several incredible examples of the end result – see this 360 view of Isla Del Sol (you’ll need Silverlight to view):
Doesn’t it feel like you’re almost there in person?
Here is an example of an interior Photosynth: Rugby Baptist Church
After you get the hang of Photosynth (which takes a little patience), it is a breeze to use.
Imagine getting a new plug-n-play sub-lease listing, pulling out your iPhone to record a virtual tour in a matter of seconds, then simply posting a link to it on Loopnet or Rofo. Right away, you could stop having to field 100s of questions about the space or waste time giving property tours with less interested parties.
The only draw back I’ve read so far is that the image composite editor is PC only, which means Mac owners can’t use the application to crop and edit the photos or create an account on the photosynth website. Hopefully, Microsoft is working on this since it is an iPhone app.
Because most CRE folks are still tech dinosaurs, and 90% of our fellow brokers are running Windows XP and Internet Explorer 8, this shouldn’t be an issue…
After seeing this app in action, I would readily pay $10-$20 for it, but, guess what? It is free. So, there is no excuse for brokers to keep taking pictures of their listings which look like they came from a disposable camera.
Eventually, (if the demand was there) I bet Rofo or Loopnet may even build functionality whereby you could upload this file directly to your listing record and have it immediately available to all viewers. Until then, we can only dream…
Download this app: iPhone
Post updated February 3, 2012 with text strikethroughs.
Greetings, fellow Photosynth.net uploader and browser!
I enjoyed your article and I’m glad to see you’re enjoying Photosynth’s mobile version of ICE.
There were a few things that need a bit of correction, though, or could be helped by a little bit of context. Please forgive me if I tell you anything you already know.
:: It is true that on Macs and PCs you currently need Silverlight to view both photosynths and panoramas which are hosted on Photosynth.net.
What you may not know yet is that the Photosynth folks are working on a new viewer built in the new web-standards graphics technologies like CSS3:3D Transforms, HTML5 Canvas, and WebGL (which didn’t exist when Photosynth.net was launched in 2008). You can learn more about this by paying attention to news about their upcoming Read/Write World project. http://bit.ly/readwriteworld
How this matters to iOS users is that the first peek at this new viewer enables mobile Safari on iOS devices to view panoramas (but not photosynths yet) on Photosynth.net without having Silverlight.
In other words, when you browse Photosynth.net’s ‘Explore’ page in mobile Safari on an iOS device, if you filter to just panoramas, you can preview any of them in Safari and once you’re doing that, launch the native app if you want to be able to zoom in to more detail.
:: In your article you say, “The only draw back I’ve read so far is that the image composite editor is PC only, which means Mac owners can’t use the application to crop and edit the photos or create an account on the photosynth website. Hopefully, Microsoft is working on this since it is an iPhone app.”
First off, (just to get this out of the way up front) it is true that as of the time of this writing, as far as desktop/laptop publishing goes, you can only upload panoramas from Windows, whether that be from the free Microsoft ICE application http://bit.ly/microsoftice or their plugin for Adobe Photoshop http://bit.ly/pstops
Similarly, you can only upload photosynths from Windows.
To be clear, though, the Photosynth mobile app on your phone is pretty much just mobile ICE at this point (minus some basic rotation and reprojection options).
- Both ICE and Photosynth’s mobile version of ICE can export either spherical/cube-mapped wraparound panoramas for Photosynth.net or a flattened .jpg version to your device’s storage.
-Both can crop/auto-crop the flattened .jpg, but not the interactive cube map that you will upload to Photosynth.net
It should be understood that Windows users who have downloaded and installed ICE do not have the capability of cropping or editing panoramas which have already been uploaded to Photosynth.net. The only way (that I am aware of) to crop a wraparound panorama before uploading it to Photosynth.net is by using Adobe Photoshop for Windows.
:: You also state that because ICE is not available for MacOSX that MacOSX/iOS users cannot create a Photosynth.net account, but this is not correct.
To create a Photosynth.net account, all you need is a free Microsoft ID (a.k.a. Windows Live ID). If you have ever had an MSN, Hotmail, or XBOX LIVE account, then you’re already set. All you need to do is sign into Photosynth.net and choose a public nickname to be known by there.
If you don’t already have a free Microsoft ID, it is super quick and easy to get one (just like setting up your Apple ID for iTunes). Just visit http://signup.live.com/
When you do, you’ll have the option to either join with your existing email address (if you just want to use your @yahoo, @gmail, @me, etc. address) or you can create a new account with a new free @hotmail or @live address, if you prefer. Once you’ve done that, sign into Photosynth.net with it and choose your public nickname. Piece of cake.
Although Mac users can’t upload photography from their desktop/laptop at this time, once you have a Photosynth account you can still use the website on a Mac to share the interactive versions of your mobile panoramas from your iPhone with your friends, manage your mobile panoramas (delete them, rename the titles, add or change the descriptions and keywords, change privacy settings on your individual panos, edit the default view when a panorama loads, add highlights, add or edit geotags, etc.), comment on others’ panoramas and photosynths, add panoramas and photosynths to your account’s favorites, and keep up with discussions on synths and panos that you’ve commented on or mobile panos that you’ve uploaded yourself by taking advantage of the RSS feeds on your profile page.
:: You also wrote, “After you get the hang of Photosynth (which takes a little patience), it is a breeze to use.”.
While I am glad that you have mastered shooting with the app, a bit of advice that I would give to any new panorama photographer (regardless of what software they’ll be using to stitch the pano with) is to try to avoid moving the camera lens when turning the camera. For more tips and explanation, please see http://bit.ly/howtopano and http://www.johnhpanos.com/epcalib.htm (This second link is aimed at people with real cameras, but explains the logic of why it is important to not move the lens between input shots for a pano.).
:: As to real estate listing sites, I am not very familiar with publishing anything to them, but the HTML embed code for any panorama and photosynth on Photosynth.net is freely available to anyone who wishes to copy and paste it into their weblog or website. As long as the real estate listings website you use allows you to paste an HTML iframe element, you should be all set.
While I’m talking about Photosynth embed code, I should quickly mention that there are four easy to use switches in the embed code which would be useful to real estate agents to modify when pasting it into a page.
The first two are simply the width and height of the embedded pano or synth. The default today is 500 pixels wide by 300 pixels tall. If that is too small for your webpage, just change the numbers so that the viewer takes up the appropriate amount of room.
The second two switches are simple true/false options. The first of the two, delayLoad is by default set to ‘true’. That setting keeps your panorama from loading along with the rest of the page and makes your users click the viewer once before it will start loading (similar to an embedded video from vimeo or YouTube). In my opinion, this is rather irritating, so I always switch ‘delayLoad’ to ‘false’.
The second of the two true/false switches is ‘slideShowPlaying’ which defaults to ‘false’. If you would like your embedded synth or pano to begin animating (a synth playing through the different photos which make it up or a panorama playing through the highlights which the author has added) without your user having to manually click the [Play] button, etc., then swap out ‘false’ for ‘true.
Photosynth.net does provide a substantial amount of storage per free account on their ad-free website and viewers, however if panoramas or photosynths on your account suddenly start generating in excess of 500 views per month and you are making money off of them, they will ask you to inquire about a commercial license at http://photosynth.net/commercial.aspx
As an aside, (and a bit of friendly ribbing) I am always somewhat amused when people scoff at Microsoft making software for Apple devices. Microsoft has been making software for Apple devices since before they’ve been making Windows. This never stopped or went away. Microsoft Office remains one of the highest selling Mac apps of all time. Also, Microsoft Live Labs (the applied research lab where Photosynth was first born) published the first Microsoft iPhone app back in 2008. http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/LarryLarsen/First-Look-Seadragon-Mobile
(Seadragon Mobile app was later pulled from the App Store when Live Labs closed in November of 2010, but Photosynth had graduated to the Bing Maps team in 2008 [so was not affected by this] and several other Microsoft divisions have made iOS apps since then. http://bit.ly/msonios ) The number of Microsoft apps on iOS pales in comparison to how many they offer on Windows Phone, but there is still a nice selection on iOS (and to a lesser degree, Android).
Hopefully some of that is helpful to you.
Wishing you happy panning,
Your fellow panner and synther, .nl
P.S. With apologies for one last jab, http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/peaked.html
Cheers! =)
Nate – thanks for the insight and clarifications. More on your points -
1.Needing Silverlight to view: It is funny you pointed out that users can actually view the panoramas on iOS, because after publishing the post, I did jump on my iPhone and was able to view several panoramas very easily. (I meant to update that comment today, but haven’t had time yet…) It is great to know that Microsoft is making these advancements for iOS devices.
2. Mac users ability to create a Photosynth account: Thanks for the clarification. For some reason, I believe a review on Apple App Store stated this was not the case, but I appreciate the clarification, as do our readers…
3. Thanks for the tips and links on how to best use the app, very beneficial… I did find it easy to use, but I am sure you’ll agree it takes a little practice to get good spherical/cube-mapped wraparound panoramas which are not mismatched in places… I admit errors are largely user related rather than software related.
4. As to Real Estate listing sites – this is great to know. Not many sites allow for custom HTML code to be included in the actual listing (that is one reason I mentioned I hoped that Loopnet and Rofo would consider incorporating it in the future).
5. As for the friendly ribbing, I can see your amusement here and know that Microsoft and Apple have had a longstanding (on-again off-again) relationship over the years relative software, etc. A question for you:
Doesn’t Windows have a mobile app store?… I couldn’t find where a Windows phone owner could download the Photosynth app?… All I found was this article: http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-explains-lack-of-windows-phone-7-photosynth-app-promises-one-in-future/:
I understand the “Winners, ship” mentality, but…. any update?
6. Peaked vs. Piqued… thanks for that – fair enough, I’ve met my match.
Thanks for the comments and corrections, very much appreciated.
As to the Windows Phone version of Photosynth’s mobile app, yes, it still isn’t published yet, sadly. The last word I heard was in early November, but the Photosynth team has always been notoriously silent about future release dates.
Here’s everything I know that the Photosynth team has said on the matter: http://bit.ly/synthywinphonedoc
(The question of an Android version of the app is also dealt with in the quotes in this link.)
It is quite the sore spot for the Windows Phone community, as you can read for yourself in the tweets I’ve collected here: http://bit.ly/synthywinphone
When the WinPhone app is published in the Windows Phone Marketplace, it should surface for this query: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/search?q=Photosynth
Can Internet Explorer <9.0 users view synths with Flash rather than Silverlight or HTML5?
Hello, Dominic,
In short, no.
As to official viewers made by the Photosynth team, they have only released their original Direct3D Photosynth viewer in 2006 and 2008 and then their Silverlight viewer in 2009 so that Mac users could view photosynths as well.
The Direct3D viewer was only usable on Windows using either Internet Explorer or Firefox 2 or 3. You only need to install Photosynth’s app for Windows http://photosynth.net/create.aspx and you can still use this faster viewer today by looking in the lower left corner of any photosynth’s page (not panoramas’ pages, mind you).
Example: http://bit.ly/bestsmallsynthd3d
Note that if you wish to use Firefox instead of IE, Firefox 4 and above break the D3D viewer. You can get FF3 at http://bit.ly/vintagefirefox but opening IE is easier for me.
Their Silverlight viewer was slower than the D3D one, but worked in Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera as well – not only on Windows, but on MacOSX as well.
The next official viewer will be the “HTML5″ one and will probably require Internet Explorer 10, since Internet Explorer 9 does not support CSS3′s 3D Transforms attribute. My belief is that for IE users with IE 9 or older, the Silverlight viewer will still be made available. The CSS3/HTML5/WebGL viewer will allow synths etc. to be viewed on Windows Phone 8, Android, iOS, OSX, Linux, any video game consoles who support the above-mentioned graphics technologies, and whatever versions of Windows IE10 decides to support (I am hoping that means everything from Vista onwards.).
…
When Read/Write World publishes their first public beta version of their RML viewer later this year, they will be open-sourcing it with the express intention of allowing other developers to take their viewer and not only add more features to it and help fix bugs but also translate the viewer into other technologies.
This opens the door for someone to write a DirectX 8 version of the RML viewer which would work on older graphics cards (like those found in Windows xp machines), just like the original Direct3D Photosynth viewer did.
It also opens the door for a third party developer who loves Adobe Flash to create a Flash version of the RML viewer. Note that there is really nothing that Flash can do which Silverlight cannot, though, so there is not really a benefit that I know of.
P.S. If you’re interested in viewing photosynths on an iOS device (rather than just the panoramas), be sure to check out Greg Pascale’s unofficial photosynth viewer, iSynth. http://bit.ly/isynth || http://vimeo.com/3636463
Sadly, it won’t allow you to zoom into the full resolution photos like you’re able to on your Mac with the Silverlight viewer, but it’s a nice stop-gap while waiting for the Read/Write World RML viewer to enter public beta.
After further searching, here is a good comparison of 360 Panorama vs. Photosynth
http://scobleizer.com/2011/04/24/testing-out-the-new-panoramic-iphone-photo-apps/
Yosemite Falls using Photosynth:
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=fcd95241-cc49-4e96-b8f1-03a373fd5ac9
Same spot using 360 Panorama:
http://occip.it/pygymkdxij
Sounds like Robert Scoble liked both apps, but appreciated the fact that he could capture the sky and ground in Photosynth and the resolution was a bit higher.